The Next Activist "Forever Campaign": Nanoplastics

Are Synthetic Substances at the Nanoscale a Cause for Concern? It is if You're a Fundraiser.

In the past year there have been a series of publications showing the ability of technologies to detect the presence of plastic materials measured at the nanoscale in humans and animals. From this, there have followed speculations and postulations on how this is affecting our health. And of course, the anti-plastics lobby is right there with their high-octane fear campaigns about very low risks. But how reliable are their health claims? How worried should we be? And why has the plastics industry not addressed these studies?

Technology and Reality

20 years ago, the big issue around nano materials focused on the inability to measure exposure in the environment (“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”). Today’s detection technologies are far more sophisticated as lab technicians now seem to be able to find residues of plastics in blood, urine and tissue at the nanoscale. See a breakdown of some of the new analytical equipment technicians are using and just how small the detected exposures are. In the human body most everything gets broken down to the nanoscale, including innumerable air pollutants and surface contaminants. The body has always attacked and excreted what is not necessary.

But what makes these studies interesting is the methodologies and technologies used to detect these exposures. The same technologies could be used to categorize the billions of parasites living in our guts at the nano level, but I suppose no one will fund such research. So these lab technicians are publishing how they can grind plastics up into fine powders, mix them into solutions and detect them at extremely low levels in testicles, heart tissue, the brain… (in mice) but in each case, they admit they cannot conclude any risk of harm at such levels of exposures.

This does not matter to the anti-plastic activists promoting this research. For them, the key argument is that there are synthetic substances in the body and they are not supposed to be there. This combines with another emotional belief that natural is good and synthetic is evil (why they never study the thousand plus untested natural chemicals in a cup of coffee coursing through our blood at the nanoscale). Add a third layer of uncertainty: a long-term low dose exposure of some single chemical mixing in a cocktail effect and you have the makings for a “we just don’t know” and “whom do you trust” anti-plastics campaign.

Cue the donors.

Numbers don’t matter to a numerically illiterate population (that buys lottery tickets to pay off their credit card debts). The fact that the exposure levels here would be so small compared to other more serious risks taken on the daily doesn’t matter. So people consuming recreational drugs are worried about plastic residues in their urine at the nano level. Those getting tattoos are fine about the (organic) ink additives spreading under their skin but are terrified by traces of plastic residues in their blood. What is the actual risk of these residues? They don’t know, and that’s what scares them the most.

But the only thing that has changed, assuming the results are accurate, is that now we have a means to detect substances that have very likely been in our bodies and environments for well over 70 years. This is not new and if the consequences of such exposures were serious, we would have seen the health declines half a century ago (when everyone was wearing latex jumpsuits). Instead that generation is living longer and better.

“Evidence is Lacking”

The seemingly endless stream of anti-plastic papers, many recently being published to time with a series of UN conferences and meetings designed to “solve” the problems of plastics, did, in most cases, acknowledge that they were not sure if there was any risk to such infinitesimal exposure levels. The papers seemed to be more about how their analytical technologies were able to detect plastics at the nanoscale. Many were published by lab technicians, a considerable number by academics in China, Iran and India, and some with more than 40 authors signing on (but only two with Orcid accounts, ie, publication pulp). So not the highest quality academic research.

Many of the articles, while crowing about the ability of their technology to detect such residues at the nanoscale, understood that these exposure levels were so low that they could not determine if the presence had put humans or animals at any level of risk. For example, some of the more honest publications admitted that:

“An understanding of the exposure of these substances in humans and the associated hazard of such exposure is needed to determine whether or not plastic particle exposure is a public health risk.” Source

“Direct evidence that this risk extends to humans is lacking.” Source 

These simplifications, while facilitating a foundational understanding, should be recognized as limitations that may impact the comprehensive representation of real-world respiratory dynamics. Source

Why are these acknowledgements of clear limitations not finding their way into the media reports? Well, it would mean that there is no news so the journalists had to try to make these nothing-findings somehow “bleed”. Could journalists report that “they are finding exposures, but they just don’t know what it means”? That would be like a weather forecast that concluded that “We see clouds but we just don’t know if it will rain”. But if you have no evidence, shouldn’t that be a story?

An Absence of Evidence (vs Evidence of an Absence?)

It is more difficult to disprove a wrong thesis by showing an absence of evidence. Absence of evidence could imply that you are just not looking hard enough. Activists know this so they can make their claims, however exuberant, and when research disproves it, they can simply claim that the researchers did not look hard enough. Some examples:

• For almost a decade, activists in NGOs like Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth claimed that genetically modified plants were having a negative effect on monarch butterflies, or bees, or (name your beloved insect here). Plant biologists were producing research that revealed no evidence to support their claims, but these studies were always met with skepticism: “Go back and test them again.” After a decade of claims with no evidence, and the need for more studies, the public assumed there must be a risk.

• The much declared honeybee crisis focused on our use of pesticides. Activists centred on seed-treated neonicotinoid insecticides, where conclusions relied on unrealistic feeding tests which did not reflect conditions in nature. When field tests showed an absence of evidence, not only were they ignored, the European Commission pushed EFSA into producing a Bee Guidance Document that made the test requirements and conditions to refute their claims unworkable and meaningless. And when evidence was emerging that there was no actual honeybee decline, the answer was simple: “There are other species of bees and we just don’t know if their populations are at threat”.

• After Andrew Wakefield published a paper claiming that the MMR triple jab vaccine could be linked to the rise in autism cases, there were a flurry of papers debunking his claims, showing a complete absence of evidence. But to this day, a large number of parents are choosing not to vaccinate. It does not matter that Wakefield was stripped of his license to practice medicine, that his methodology was badly flawed, that his paper was retracted, that he was being funded by tort lawyers wanting to sue vaccine producers and that he had an interest in a company seeking a patent for an alternative to the MMR triple jab. People intent on being afraid willingly let the fearmongers in.

• For more than three decades, activists have tried to link a myriad of health problems to the presence of possible endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). There was, however, an absence of evidence linking cancers, birth defects, infertility issues … to potential EDCs. Did it matter to the activists that, not potential EDCs, but known EDCs are consumed at much higher doses in everything from coffee, soy additives and humus, or that woman willingly take strong EDCs daily via contraceptives and hormone replacement therapies?

So activists are falling over themselves preparing campaigns that link the presence of nanoplastics in our bodies to … at this point you can add whatever disease is in the news, has no clear cause and scares a significant amount of the public into donating to your NGO. It will take decades for researchers to prove that your correlation is not actually causation and that there is an absence of evidence. But even when the claims are fully debunked, the public will still not feel comfortable or trust the substance and the industry.

A Cause without a Disease

I suspect activists will continue to research and hypothesize potential effects from nanoplastics, putting forward links to diseases that can neither be proven nor disproven. This is very similar to the three decades of research postulation about the effects on humans from potential endocrine disrupting chemicals. EDCs have been called the “cause without a disease”. So much funding has been spent, research institutes built, task forces established to look into this threat to the human race from these foreign chemical invaders. Yet in three decades, they could only hypothesize that these potential EDCs could cause certain diseases. In some cases, the cause itself was not reliable (like the Danish study on EDCs and male fertility where sperm counts were shown to actually be increasing – the researchers simply chose not to publish that data). Finally research funding ran out and people stopped being afraid of those fearmongering campaigns.

Could we be subjected to a generation of researchers funding studies looking to see what diseases, effects, illnesses these nanoplastics could be causing? There is enough hatred of the plastics industry, of chemicals and of industry in general to motivate funders to keep the public mindful of these synthetic materials passing through their bodies (or their children’s bodies … or their fetus…). And there is a growing number of under-funded researchers who have seen their post-docs have to transition to lab technicians or Uber drivers. This has the makings of the next activist “forever campaign”.

We can look forward to claims like “Nanoplastics cause autism!” or “Nanoplastics cause Parkinsons” and before you can say “in mice”, these studies will be published and amplified in the media with activist lobbying pressure to invoke precautionary policy measures. Like EDCs, these postulations do suffer from an absence of evidence, but it will take decades to sufficiently refute or debunk their junk science, especially if they continue to manipulate the media to consider any dissent as “industry obstruction”.  After a generation of doubt, the lingering stench will have stuck on useful plastic products and the supply chain will have retooled to a sub-standard, expensive and less sustainable alternative.

To save the researchers’ time, many of them can just rehash their old studies by making the claim that nanoplastics are endocrine disruptors. A petrified-prone public would be ready to buy into that one, with just the right mix of media coordination, well-funded NGO campaigns and tort lawyer dramatic performances and our relentless activist scientists should get a further decade of funding, books and screen-time. And think of all of the retiring Hollywood actors signing up for low-quality fear documentaries, crusading to end plastics and enjoying, once more, the media limelight.

Should I be worried?

Everyone deals with uncertainty differently. Telling people there is a cloud in the sky with a 3% chance of precipitation would make some people stay at home (the precautionistas), some would bring an umbrella (the risk managers) and some would continue as normal with the hopes of using the rain (the risk takers).

In the case of uncertainties about the presence of trace nanoplastics in humans or animals, precautionistas are calling for the complete banning of all plastic products (they were already doing that before these studies), risk managers are looking at ways to remove or limit plastic exposures and the risk takers are waiting to see if there are any health effects, and until then, are enjoying the benefits these plastic products bring.

What if these inert materials are simply ingested and then excreted from living organisms at such minute levels as to be inconsequential? I understand how this line of thinking could be considered as obscene today because, well, you know, … chemicals. But these are not living organisms like parasites or digestible food that bodies rely on for nourishment. Nothing might actually come of such exposures, if their minute levels of detection are actually accurate.

Many will argue that, however small, these organisms are not natural nor part of us and even if they are just passing through, in an inert state, they are pollutants that must be removed. I can just imagine some French naturopathic wellness company is marketing a product that absorbs and removes nanoplastics. But the same could then be said about the billions of parasites being hosted in our guts – they are also not part of us. In this case, however, removing them could be detrimental to our well-being (and there are indeed French naturopathic wellness companies selling me products to improve my gut flora).

I am worried about one thing though. The inability of the plastics industry to address this issue and defend their products in light of overly zealous activist postulations will mean that I will likely lose a large number of innovative products that I enjoy and benefit from. If the plastics industry doesn’t quickly get in gear, it is quite reasonable to expect that most plastics will be needlessly and rapidly taken off of the market within the next decade (replaced by useless, ineffective and more expensive alternatives).

I hope you are enjoying your “natural” paper straw … and don’t at all be concerned about its adhesives or wax leeching into your gut and crossing your brain-blood barrier at the nanoscale. Afterall, it’s natural.